Self-Aggrandizement: archetyping

This past weekend, watching the last Sex & the City, part of me was thinking: "Thank god this thing is ending; the show's gone so far downhill this is basically a mercy killing. And clearly Carrie's ending up with Big. I could have called that from the first episode." Yet, another part of me was thinking: "Thank god Carrie's ending up with Big, because if she doesn't, I'm utterly fucked."

Truth be told, from that first episode, I identified with Mr. Big. Or, rather, I identified with his archetype, the broader class of Bigs who show up in film after film: Jack Nicholson's Harry Sanborn in Something's Gotta Give; Pierce Brosnan's Thomas Crown in the remade Thomas Crown Affair; any of cinematic history's laundry list of men who too late discover the same traits that made them moguls led them, in their personal life, to push people away, to end promising relationships abruptly, to bounce from fling to fling with no apparent end destination in mind, finding increasingly little joy in each.

While I may only be starting out on the route to mogul, I'm already well seasoned in ending good relationships for bad reasons. Which is why I'm always secretly thrilled by the redemptive endings Hollywood inevitably lays out for these characters. It's an odd relief to find one somehow changing his spots, reconciling his romantic streak with his inability to actually sustain that romance. The happily ever afters let me tell myself: if that's the path I'm heading down, at least it ends up somewhere good.

archetyping Filed Thursday, February 26 2004.

archetyping
Filed Thursday, February 26 2004.